Linux is in no way disappointing to me these days! I love what is going on with Cinnamon and Unity. To me Linux distributions have finally taken on their own direction, they are not copying other operating systems, they are leading in innovation and introducing new features. To me Linux distributions seem better than they ever have and have a certain excitement that you do not see with Microsoft and Apple. Linux is making headway and for all the right reasons. I am seeing more and more people switching over to Linux and with no arm twisting, they are liking what they see on their screens. These really are the good times!

I was using wXP to play some games; turns out the new ati graphics drivers are unstable on my system (A8 apu); so i had several BSOD incidents and ultimately a non-booting system, go figure; i can't recall exactly what happened on the last boot, but I decided to reinstall, then remembered I had imaged the drive a couple of times using clonezilla, so I was able to restore to a mostly stable system (as stable as xp ever is, i suppose); then I restored some programs and games, played some planetside and ddo (and EON alpha, pretty cool) then shut er down and back to MINT, whew!!!!

such a flaksjdf;lkajsdf;lkajsdf relief!

thanks MINT guys! and community! it sure is great to come back after such a horrible winblow experience;

so I went back to the ati/amd drivers from my MOBO disc and wXP seems to be working ok, for now; but, I will be getting into wine; it seems wine + winetricks is the way to go; I have heard you can just run a xp program that has been installed in xp as though you installed it in wine, though I don't even know how to access other HD partitions in wine, yet. Ah, well, I think I will check a book out from the library;

letian wrote:I'm disappointed by the lack of out-of-the-box stability and functionality.

On YOUR computer. Linux has been nothing but rock solid for me and everyone I've installed it for. I switched to linux because I had nothing but problems with windows. It can go both ways ya know.

I've done 100's of installs of windows and linux, and by far, windows always gives me more grief. Btw, 2 vendors that preinstall linux are http://www.system76.com and http://zareason.com/shop/home.php Invest in a linux laptop like you did with windows, (or mac) and you'll be happy. Otherwise stay with windows and stop complaining.

complain is just a natural reaction. Linux is rock solid, yes, until you try to install, remove and actually work with the stuff. There is a reason why I don't want to waste my time on configuration and fixing things any more. And, there is a reason why I can be disappointed by this distribution.

On the good part, I installed Mint xfce and very pleased to see that it looks very stable.

The biggest problem with linux is that most of the community doesn't admit the faults regarding stability, usability, compatibility and performance. I agree with some points raised by Letian.

Stability: Linux as a headless server is really really rock solid. I've never witnessed it fail in my office. We have to shut it down very rarely in case of some hardware changes or power failuer. But desktop? Yes, stable too if you ignore the outermost laster - X, WMs, DEs, zillion configuration utilities for subcore components (sound, network, graphics, wifi, bla..bla..). If you consider the stuff in the outermost layer, i'm sorry to say it's not that stable, you never know when you've to fix a thing that should be broken in the first place. Of course, the other OSes were not that stable a couple of years ago, but not anymore. At least on the GUI level you'll hardly ever experience any ugly surprise. And Yes individual distro maintainers can't do much about it, the whole ecosystem is not that cohesive. Though every bit and piece is excellent in their own respects, but the integration of them is bad.

Usability: I found a typical linux desktop (without Unity and Gnome Shell) more usable than the other OSes. I love the multiple workspaces, a great command line, easy availability of software and a zillion options to tinker and tweak. There're a few issues in the mobile computers regarding to power usage and graphics/audio hardware, but I can live with the problem.

Compatibility: Not that much compatibility issues any more. For my home and office use I can easily share/work files across the other OSes. Of course, there are some issues with MS Office vs. LibreOffice and Photoshop vs. GIMP, but they are no showstopper.

Performance: Any Linux distribution will revolve circles around those all those other OSes in terms of raw performance. But if you consider 3D, Graphics and some esoteric hardware, sadly, linux distribution are lagging far behind. Take for example the recent ATI and NVdia chips and their performance in Linux, even the proprietary drivers are not free from trouble, and please forget the performance of opensource drivers. Software-wise some applications are not that good in performance. But that's in some professional fields.

In short, linux distributions all, have championed in the core departments of computing, but all still lack, more or less, in that outermost layer, which is very problematic for an average user. The community should treat their respective linux distribution as a tool. Not a cult or religion. The present environment is just a cult. I am happy with that, I don't care if it doesn't work for a minority. But I'm sure that minority opinion will never let linux rise above a certain level of adoption.

Finally, the good news is that future seems bright courtesy to some user-centric efforts such as Mint, Mepis and Maegia.

Last edited by manmath on Wed Nov 28, 2012 10:45 am, edited 1 time in total.

manmath wrote:Compatibility: Not that much compatibility issues any more. For my home and office use I can easily share/work files across the other OSes. Of course, there are some issues with MS Office vs. LibreOffice and Photoshop vs. GIMP, but they are no showstopper.

A newer LibreOffice has compatibility issues with its own predecessors.

I have read your posts letian and I'm wondering if you ARE not the problem Didn't had 1% of the problem you had with all the distro you tried. And I have been using only linux for several years now. Maybe you are not acting well...

killer de bug wrote:I have read your posts letian and I'm wondering if you ARE not the problem Didn't had 1% of the problem you had with all the distro you tried. And I have been using only linux for several years now. Maybe you are not acting well...

Yes, you are right. Whenever we try to find a replacement for windows, it ends up like this. I was looking for a distro for my wife) Who is a complete newbie even in windows. And a lot of things in linux do not behave the way they do in windows. As I said, I can solve things myself, but she can't) She says linux sucks) I get offended all the time, but in the end she's right. She pointed at some issues I didn't notice myself. Like small little glitches. A button stopped working or xfwm just didn't load one happy day. Nobody knows why)) But that is the truth of it. Being a linux user, you just get used to these little nuances. So, all in all, my experience at managing this little "bugs" just persuaded me, under any condition, never use GNOME, KDE, Cinnamon, Mate and even XFCE. Install, set up, config everything with your own hands, test it, work on it. Use openbox, lxde, use simple unobstructed UIs. Everything will work as a charm.

As I said earlier, if you're looking for a replacement of windows, you're going in some trouble. Both systems are different and when you use Linux you need to think as a Linux user. There is a lot of opportunities by using Linux over windows, but you need to learn how to do things. A lot of things seems normal in Windows world because you are used to do them. With Linux it's a little bit different at the beginning.

But if you're a complete newbie with computer, I think (just my opinion) that Linux is easier to start. I really think that Linux is not difficult to understand. And with distro like Mint or Ubuntu, you don't have a lot of configuration to do before using your computer. Maybe the drivers for the graphics...

I'm sorry for your problems and hope that you will solve them. Good luck.

As a relative newbie, I have to confess to being slightly puzzled by comments in this thread (and others) regarding how different Linux is from Windows and how there is a very different learning curve. As an end user, to me, they are much the same.

I'm running LM13 (MATE). When I want to read and send emails I launch Thunderbird as opposed to Pegasus mail. When I browse the web I launch Firefox, same as Windows. When I download something, I save it to a folder called 'downloads', same as Windows. When I edit a photo, I launch GIMP, same as... When I edit a video I launch avidemux instead of Windows movie maker...etc.etc.

Even things like right clicking and "open with" work the same way. Not seeing a "c:\" at the start of the directory structure doesn't really take much getting used to.

I suppose the key words are "END USER" here because I have no intention of screwing around with system files (as in Windows) but the journey from Windows to Linux doesn't have to be the marathon it's sometimes made out to be.

Please no flames, it's just my tuppenceworth (not much I appreciate ), I fully understand there may be individual hardware/software issues.

ummagumma wrote:As a relative newbie, I have to confess to being slightly puzzled by comments in this thread (and others) regarding how different Linux is from Windows and how there is a very different learning curve. As an end user, to me, they are much the same.

I'm running LM13 (MATE). When I want to read and send emails I launch Thunderbird as opposed to Pegasus mail. When I browse the web I launch Firefox, same as Windows. When I download something, I save it to a folder called 'downloads', same as Windows. When I edit a photo, I launch GIMP, same as... When I edit a video I launch avidemux instead of Windows movie maker...etc.etc.

Even things like right clicking and "open with" work the same way. Not seeing a "c:\" at the start of the directory structure doesn't really take much getting used to.

I suppose the key words are "END USER" here because I have no intention of screwing around with system files (as in Windows) but the journey from Windows to Linux doesn't have to be the marathon it's sometimes made out to be.

Please no flames, it's just my tuppenceworth (not much I appreciate ), I fully understand there may be individual hardware/software issues.

edit:typos

basically, most daily tasks of a mere user can be done without leaving a web browser even. Linux does well as a "toaster" system. But as soon as you diverge from the handpicked apps of your distro, you are on your own.There are a lot of ppl out there, who actually are pretty demanding. "Linux on the desktop" is a sweet myth for the geeks.

exploder wrote:Linux is in no way disappointing to me these days! I love what is going on with Cinnamon and Unity. To me Linux distributions have finally taken on their own direction, they are not copying other operating systems, they are leading in innovation and introducing new features. To me Linux distributions seem better than they ever have and have a certain excitement that you do not see with Microsoft and Apple. Linux is making headway and for all the right reasons. I am seeing more and more people switching over to Linux and with no arm twisting, they are liking what they see on their screens. These really are the good times!

One can not argue that. Linux is miles better, than it was, say, in 2009. Much friendlier and accommodating. However, it is just the first impression. There are a lot of holes, no desktop integrity and time consuming learning curve -- all are huge issues.

letian wrote:basically, most daily tasks of a mere user can be done without leaving a web browser even. Linux does well as a "toaster" system. But as soon as you diverge from the handpicked apps of your distro, you are on your own.There are a lot of ppl out there, who actually are pretty demanding. "Linux on the desktop" is a sweet myth for the geeks.

Well this "mere user" is delighted with the functionality, stability and yes, the learning curve as well. Surely the point of a desktop system is that "mere users" can do what they need to do without necessarily understanding all the underpinnings. The beauty of Mint in particular is that if I want to delve into more complicated stuff...I can, and I'm not on my own as is being demonstrated right now on this forum.

lol, this is ridiculous.Just after I updated XFCE yesterday, we watched some videos, then turned the laptop off. In the morning when it's time to do some work we are booting XFCE, the document that my wife has been working on for half of the week has disappeared from the desktop. My wife panicked as she was not able to see her files, the desktop screen was empty, there was no wallpaper and right click didn't work.So of course the file was lying in Desktop directory, which was available only from thunar. How is she supposed to know that? So, if you call this stable distribution I don't know what is the definition of stable then. DEs are just plain horrible, or maybe its just Mint, in the end of the day I don't really care. Plain, bold openbox works so much better.

You see, this is a perfect example of what is "linux on the desktop" is. I purposely did not touch anything on my wife's laptop, I did not update nor did I try to play with the config. I wanted to see how it shall all work out in the end. It didn't) Windows has achieved something really extraordinary. It provides distractless experience. You don't need to be afraid, that one day all your files shall disappear or your login manager/wm fails to load, or you won't hear sound from the speakers without any reason.I guess I'm done with mint for now. Maybe we shall have more luck with something else.

letian, it is clear you are disappointed with Linux. You have your experience, others have their experiences. Neither will sway the other, so I think all that was useful to say has been said a few times here already. Not much point in dragging this one, so I'm locking this topic. As always, use whatever works best for you